Everyone's Pokemon Ranch Preview
Upcoming Nintendo WiiWare Game Offers DS to Wii Connectivity
Gamers who own Pokemon Diamond or Pearl for DS and want to bring their Pokemon over to the Wii may be interested in Nintendo's upcoming Everyone's Pokemon Ranch.
Recently, Nintendo announced its plans for WiiWare, small-scale video games that can be downloaded to the Wii for cheap. One of the first titles for Nintendo's WiiWare will be Everyone's Pokemon Ranch.
The Basics
The concept of Everyone's Pokemon Ranch (which is only a tentative title for North America, and officially goes by Minna no Pokemon Bokujo in Japan) is that players who own a copy of Nintendo's wildly popular DS games Pokemon Diamond or Pearl can transfer their Pokemon from their DS to the Wii. Yukari, a friend of Mizuki from the Japanese versions of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, owns the ranch which will house the Pokemon.
One of the biggest draws to the game will be that the gamers' Pokemon will now be in full 3D. Once on the Wii, the Pokemon will interact with gamers similar to how the Miis interact with gamers on the Wii's Mii channel -- by sleeping, walking around, or even dancing. Players can additionally bring in their own Miis to interact with the Pokemon.
Photographing the Pokemon
An additional feature in the game involves photography. Once gamers transfer up to 1,000 Pokemon from their DS to their Wii, they can also take pictures of them interacting with each other, with Yukari, or with their own Miis. Once pictures are taken, they can be saved on to an SD card and then transferred to a PC; from there, of course, gamers can send the pictures to friends, post the pictures online, save a picture as their desktop background, and so on.
How Can the Pokemon be Transferred?
GameCube owners will probably remember Nintendo's plans for a wide variety of games taking advantage of Game Boy Advance to GameCube connectivity using the special connectivity cord sold in stores. As with many of Nintendo's special accessories, the GBA-GCN connectivity never really took off, and only a couple of games actually used the cord.
However, those who hate having to buy extra accessories for games like this need fret no more -- since both the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii feature WiFi connectivity, no cords will be needed to transfer the Pokemon from the DS to the Wii. All one needs will be a Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, and a copy of Pokemon Diamond or Pearl.
Outlook
As a WiiWare title, Everyone's Pokemon Ranch is purposely a very simplistic game. The title will retail for just 1,000 WiiPoints (or about $10), saving gamers from having to dole out $50 from seeing their Pokemon in 3D. With that said, the game is really only meant for big Pokemon fans, and those who don't own a copy of Pokemon Diamond or Pearl should probably shift their focus on to some of the other WiiWare games to be released in 2008.
Everyone's Pokemon Ranch will release on March 25th, 2008, in Japan, and sometime during 2008 in North America and Europe.
